NETPRESENTER TO CHALLENGE POINTCAST

While Pointcast has been grabbing all the headlines in the emerging information TV screensaver marketplace, a tiny privately held firm from the Netherlands has been working at a similar problem from a somewhat different angle. NETpresenter B.V, which has 10 staff, launched version 2.0 of its eponymously-named software at the beginning of the year, but […]

While Pointcast has been grabbing all the headlines in the emerging information TV screensaver marketplace, a tiny privately held firm from the Netherlands has been working at a similar problem from a somewhat different angle. NETpresenter B.V, which has 10 staff, launched version 2.0 of its eponymously-named software at the beginning of the year, but began by concentrating on the LAN and WAN marketplace before tackling the Internet. This month it is set to launch a free plug-in for Netscape 2.0 and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The company was founded in 1995 by Frank Hoen, at 29 an Amiga multimedia veteran who switched platforms in the nick of time. NETpresenter is a multimedia authoring tool that allows a company to broadcast information across its own network in the form of screensavers – their own information rather than external published news sources, as Pointcast does. It is in two parts: the editor for creating content, and the player, for Windows desktops or even televisions. Content is produced in the Editor, and the resultant script saved on the server (any that is network-accessible from Windows clients). The player then polls the server, subscribes to a channel, downloads any new script files and executes them. Network bandwidth used up is non-existent, claims Hoen, which is why the technology is attractive for the Internet. The players themselves take up only 200Kb, and the plug-in is 100Kb, compared with 2.54Mb for Shockwave, he says. As well as the browser plug-in, NETpresenter is set to launch version 2.1 this month, adding 32-bit client support for the first time. By year-end Version 3.0 should be fully Internet/intranet-enabled, with advanced HTML authoring included, allowing it to be used to produce more complex web sites. The product caught the eye of Microsoft’s German division when it was shown off at Cebit earlier this year – hence the support for Explorer. It’s also been installed as a means of inter-office communications at some pretty large companies, including Philips and General Motors, and been used for information kiosks and airport or railway travel information systems. Players currently cost around ú8 each in the UK. The company has set up a US office in Lightfoot, Virginia.